Topic: Media Research Center
When it was revealed that both former FBI director James Comey and ex-FBI deputy James McCabe were targeted with IRS audits after being fired from their jobs under the Trump administration -- events considered highly suspicious -- the Media Research Center, no fan of the IRS, rushed to its defense in a July 7 post by Nicholas Fondacaro complaining that the media was reporting the story despite "no evidence" to support it:
On Wednesday, The New York Times via Washington correspondent Michael Schmidt published a fairly weak article suggesting former President Trump had ordered the IRS to conduct audits of former FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Despite the blatant inconstancies and admitting there’s “no evidence,” the liberal media’s ‘it rings true’ barometer carried the day on Thursday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC.
“So, what are the chances of two Trump foes getting audited by the IRS? Well, it's about one in 82 million according to a New York Times calculation,” Mitchell pompously announced as she came back from a commercial break.
Well, since, she brought it up. In his article, Schmidt hid the fact that McCabe’s audit didn’t begin until “October 2021, nine months after Mr. Trump left office.” It was a key fact he didn’t get around to mentioning until paragraph 44 (of 54). Comey’s happened in 2019.
The supposed connection was Trump-appointed commissioner, Charles Rettig, who still runs the agency and has denied involvement. And something Schmidt failed to address in his article: if Trump was brazen enough to order an IRS audit after he left office, then why hasn’t he ordered them to drop the audit he’s allegedly been facing for years?
Because Trump repeatedly used that as an excuse to never release his tax returns while president and demanding that the audit end would remove that excuse and that talking point? Just a guess, and something Fondacaro apparently never considered.
Fondacaro also seems to have forgotten that his employer and other right-wing organizations spesnt years playing the victim over the IRS under President Obama purportedly targeting conservative nonprofit groups for investigation without any real evidence. The truth was that the IRS was also investigating progressive nonprofit groups as well amid a flood of such groups seeking nonprofit status. Nevertheless, Curtis Houck ranted in 2017: "What about the IRS until President Barack Obama? Try Google searching for why Lois Lerner is living a comfortable life in secrecy nowadays. Conservative groups were unfairly targeted by the IRS when applying for tax-exempt status and it occurred on Obama’s watch. Plain and simple." Because conservatives squealed the loudest, the conservative groups got a settlement, which the MRC touted as "VINDICATION."
The MRC was accusing the IRS under Obama of being directed by him to harass conservative groups (which, despite Houck's assertion, wasn't really true). Yet Fondacaro wants us to believe that Trump's IRS is incapable of doing something equally terrible in demanding audits of Trump's political enemies? Please.
